Derek Sprawson: Pale Shadows
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
2 - 26 February 2000
BERNARD JACOBSON GALLERY
14A Clifford Street, London W1X 1RF
www.jacobsongallery.co.uk
Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London
2 - 26 February 2000
The imagery in Derek Sprawson’s recent paintings originates from accumulations of objects which are photographed and then projected onto the canvas often at a distorting angle. Using the projected shadow as a framework Derek Sprawson loosely draws the objects into the prepared surface with a freehand, doodle like mark, removing, to varying degrees, the recognisability of the objects.
The objects used include toys and organic matter. These items seem to inhabit the desert like environment of the flat ground. Sometimes appearing totally abstract, sometimes quite recognisable, these objects exist in a sort of mediated half state between their physical self and their representation. The colours seem to have a ghostly, shadowy quality and somehow do not quite relate to the colours we are used to seeing in painting or real life.
In contrast, the paintings themselves make one very aware of their physicality. The images seem to be almost knitted into the ground, each application of colour dissolving and blending with the colours of the layered under - painting. The mixture of oil paint with wax which Derek Sprawson uses gives the surface a softness and density and produces the effect of a a faint luminous sheen. At the same time it makes the work so physically sensitive that it brings out the aspect of vulnerability, tenderness and exposure implied in the painting’s forms and images.
Derek Sprawson is senior lecturer in painting at Nottingham Trent University. He also curates exhibitions. He won the drawing prize at the 15th bienale of Drawing and Sculpture at Caldhas de Rhaina in Portugal in 1995 and in 1997 was the invited artist at the Bienale where he created an installation of large wall drawings. This is his second one person exhibition at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery. Derek Sprawson’s work is in private and public collections in Great Britain and the USA.
14A Clifford Street, London W1X 1RF
www.jacobsongallery.co.uk
